Hi Reader,
Let’s face it, a big part of a design leader’s job is trying to introduce new ways to work or change how companies think about problems and solutions. IRL, introducing new mindsets and practices can be really hard, especially when your company has done things a certain way for a long time.
While your ultimate goal may be to help transform a company into one that’s customer-led or human-first, it’s super important to pick and choose your partners strategically along the way. You need to find your allies, your sidekicks.
The conventional, and often suggested, approach is to “find yourself an executive champion or sponsor!”. There are three big factors that tend to complicate this in the real world:
If you want to try new things, build a case of evidence that those things work, and are looking to find yourself an executive sponsor, I suggest a slightly different approach. Start with sidekicks. That is to say, begin experimenting now with those who are less influential but willing to try new things with the idea of gaining executive trust along the way. My favorite way to do it is with a simple 2x2 grid.
The Stakeholder Map; Find your sidekicks to find your champions
Stakeholder analysis is a great way to select strategic partners. Utilizing a two-by-two grid, you can quickly map who has power/influence in your workplace and who is willing to experiment with new ways of working. As you may have guessed, this particular version is called Stakeholder Mapping.
In my adapted version of the Stakeholder Map the purpose of this plot is two-fold: 1) To understand stakeholders who will advocate for design when designers aren’t in the room, and 2) To find “less visible” projects to work on to build case studies of success.
The grid is divided into four sections:
The grid looks like this:
5 steps to conduct your analysis
There are five steps to take to complete the analysis.
After this quick analysis, you should have a relatively quick idea of who you might try and work with more when it comes to new processes or practices. And, hopefully you feel a little more confident in those decisions.
Time and time again, I’ve found sidekicks to be the key to developing trust across an organization at all levels. They’re the people we likely work with day to day and if we can have positive collaborations together, we can pitch and sell the value of the work together. That’s really what this is all about. Finding willing partners to try new things with, doing great work, then advocating to do more of that work with senior leaders.
Resources
Use the Stakeholder Map Mural template
Download a PDF version
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Alright, that’s enough for today! By now, you have a better idea on how to sell your argument and with whom.
– Ryan
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